Dick told her something of his experiences in the Rio Chama Valley without mentioning that part of them which had to do with Miss Valdés. At the sound of Manuel Pesquiera's name the eyes of the girl flashed. Dick had already noticed that his name was always to her a signal for repression of some emotion. The eyes contracted and hardened the least in the world. Some men would not have noticed this, but more than once Gordon's life had hung upon the right reading of such signs.
"You think that Mr. Pesquiera has hired them to watch you?" she suggested.
"Maybe he has and maybe he hasn't. Some of those willing lads of Miss Valdés don't need any hiring. They want to see what I'm up to. They're not overlooking any bets."
"But they may shoot you."
He looked at her drolly. "They may, but I'll be there at the time. I'm not sleeping on the job, Miss Kate."
"You didn't turn around once yesterday."
"Hmp! I saw them out of the edge of my eyes. And when I turned a corner I always saw them mighty plain. They couldn't have come very close without my knowing it."
"Don Manuel is very anxious to have Miss Valdés win, isn't he?"
Dick observed that just below the eyes two spots were burning in the usually pale cheeks.
"Yes," he answered simply.
"Why?"
"He's her friend and a relative."
It seemed to Gordon that there was a touch of defiance in the eyes that held to his so steadily. She was going to find out the truth, no matter what he thought.
"Is that all—nothing more than a friend or a relative?"
The miner's boyish laugh rippled out. "You'd ought to have been a lawyer, Miss Kate. No, that ain't all Don Manuel doesn't make any secret of it. I don't know why I should. He wants to be prince consort of the Valdés kingdom."
"Because of ... the estate?"
"Lord, no! He's one man from the ground up, M. Pesquiera is. In spite of the estates."
"You mean that he ... loves Valencia Valdés?"
"Sure he does. Manuel doesn't care much who gets the kingdom if he gets the princess."
"Is she so ... pretty?"
Dick stopped to consider this. "Why, yes, I reckon she is pretty, though I hadn't thought of it before. You see, pretty ain't just the word. She's a queen. That is, she looks like a queen ought to but don't. Take her walk for instance: she steps out like as if in another moment she might fly."
"That doesn't mean anything. It's almost silly," replied the downright Miss Underwood, not without a tinge of spite.
"It means something to me. I'm trying to give you a picture of her. But you'd have to see her to understand. When she's around mean and little things crawl out of your mind. She's on the level and square and fine—a thoroughbred if there ever was one."
"I believe you're in love with her, too."
The young man found himself blushing. "Now don't get to imagining foolishness. Miss Valdés hates the ground I walk on. She thinks I'm the limit, and she hasn't forgotten to tell me so."
"Which, of course, makes you fonder of her," scoffed Miss Underwood. "Does she hate the ground that Don Manuel walks on?"
"Now you've got me. I go to the foot of the class, because I don't know."
"But you wish you did," she flung at him, with a swift side glance.
"Guessing again, Miss Kate. I'll sure report you if you waste the State's time on such foolishness," he threatened gaily.
"Since you're in love with her, why don't you marry Miss Valdés and consolidate the two claims?" demanded the girl.
Her chin was tilted impudently toward him, but Gordon guessed that there was an undercurrent of meaning in her audacity.
"What commission do you charge for running your matrimonial bureau?" he asked innocently.
"The service comes free to infants," she retorted sweetly.
She was called away to attend to other business. An hour later she passed the desk where he was working.
"So you think I'm an infant at that game, do you?"
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," was her saucy answer.
"You haven't—not a mite. What about Don Manuel? Is he an infant at it, too?"
A sudden flame of color swept her face. The words she flung at Gordon seemed irrelevant, but he did not think them so. "I hate him."
And with that she was gone.
Dick's eyes twinkled. He had discovered another reason for her interest in his fortunes.
Later in the day, when the pressure of work had relaxed, the clerk drifted his way again while searching for some papers.
"Your lawyers are paid to look up all this, aren't they? Why do you do it, then?" she asked.
"The case interests me. I want to know all about it."
"Would you like to see the old Valdés house here in Santa Fé? My father bought it when Alvaro Valdés built his new town house. One day I found in the garret a bundle of old Spanish letters. They were written by old Bartolomé to his son. I saved them. Would you care to see them?"
"Very much. The old chap was a great character. I suppose he was really the last of the great feudal barons. The French Revolution put an end to them in Europe—that and the industrial revolution. It's rather amazing that out here in the desert of this new land dedicated to democracy the idea was transplanted and survived so long."
"I'll bring the letters to-morrow and you can look them over. Any time you like I'll show you over the house. It's really rather interesting—much more so than their new one, which is so modern that it looks like a thousand others. Valencia was born in the old house. What will you give me to let you into the room?"
He brushed aside her impudence with a laugh. "Your boss is looking this way. I think he's getting ready to fire you."
"He's more likely to be fired himself. I'm under civil service and he isn't. Will you take your shoes off when you go into the holy of holies?"
"What happens to little girls when they ask too many questions? Go 'way. I'm busy."
* * *
CHAPTER XIII
AMBUSHED
On her return from luncheon that same afternoon Miss Underwood brought Dick a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. She tossed them down upon the desk in front of him.
"I haven't read them myself. Of course they're in Spanish. I did try to get through one of them, but it was too much like work and I gave it up. But since they're written by her grandfather they'll interest you more than they did me," Miss Kate told him, with the saucy tilt to her chin that usually accompanied her impudence.
He had lived in Chihuahua three years as a mining engineer, so that he spoke and read Spanish readily. The old Don wrote a stiff angular hand, but as soon as he became accustomed to it Dick found little difficulty. Some of the letters were written from the ranch, but most of them carried the Santa Fé date line at the time the old gentleman was governor of the royal province. They were addressed to his son Alvaro, at that time a schoolboy in Mexico City. Clearly Don Bartolomé intended his son to be informed as to the affairs of the province, for the letters were a mine of information in regard to political and social conditions. They discussed at length, too, the business interests of the family and the welfare of the peons dependent upon it.
All afternoon Gordon pored over these fascinating pages torn from a dead and buried past. They were more interesting than any novel he had ever read, for they gave him a photograph, as it were projected by his imagination upon a moving picture canvas, of the old regime that had been swept into the ash heap by modern civilization. The letters revealed the old Don frankly. He was proud, imperious, heady, and intrepid. To his inferiors he was curt but kind. They flocked to him with their troubles and their quarrels. The judgment of their overlord was final with his tenants. Clearly he had a strong sense of his responsibilities to them and to the state. A quaint flavor of old-world courtesy ran through the letters like a thread of gold.
It was a paragraph from one of the last letters that riveted Dick's attention. Translated into English, it ran as follows:
"You ask, my dear son, whether I have relinquished the great grant made us by Facundo Megares. In effect I have. During the past two years I have twice, acting as governor, conveyed to settlers small tracts from this grant. The conditions under which such a grant must be held are too onerous. Moreover, neither I nor you, nor your son, nor his son will live to see the day when there is not range enough for all the cattle that can be brought into the province. Just now time presses, but in a later letter I shall set forth my reasons in detail."
A second and a third time Dick read the paragraph to make sure that he had not misunderstood it. The meaning was plain. There could be no doubt about it. In black and white he had a statement from old Don Bartolomé himself that he considered the grant no longer valid, that he had given it up because he did not think it worth holding. He had but to prove the handwriting in court—a thing easy enough to do, since the Don's bold, stiff writing could be found on a hundred documents—and the Valdés claimants would be thrown out of possession.
Gordon looked in vain for the "later letter" to which Bartolomé referred. Either it had never been written or it had been destroyed. But without it he had enough to go on.
Before he left the State House he made a proposal to Miss Underwood to buy the letters from her.
"What do you want with a bunch of old letters?" she asked.
"One of them helps my case. The Don refers to the grant and says he has relinquished his claim."
She nodded at him with brisk approval. "It's fair of you to tell me that." The girl stood for a moment considering, a pencil pressed against her lips. "I suppose the letters are not mine to give. They belong to father. Better see him."
"Where?"
"At the office of the New Mexican. Or you can come to the house to-night."
"Believe I'll see him right away."
Within half an hour Dick had bought the bundle of letters for five hundred dollars. He returned to the State House with an order to Kate Underwood to deliver them to him upon demand.
"Dad make a good bargain?" asked Miss Underwood, with a laugh.
Gordon told her the price he had paid.
"If I had telephoned to him what you wanted them for they would have cost you three times as much," she told him, nodding sagely.
"Then I'm glad you didn't. Point of fact you haven't the slightest idea what I want with them."
"To help your suit. Isn't that what you're going to use them for?"
Mildly he answered "Yes," but he did not tell her which suit they were to help.
As he was leaving she spoke to him without looking up from her writing. "Mother and I will be at home this evening, if you'd like to look the house over."
"Thanks. I'd be delighted to come. I'm really awfully interested."
"I see you are," she answered dryly.
Followed by his brown shadows at a respectful distance, Dick walked back to the hotel whistling gaily.
"Some one die and leave you a million dollars, son?" inquired the old miner, with amiable sarcasm.
"Me, I'm just happy because I'm not a Chink," explained his friend, and passed to the hotel writing-room.
He sat down, equipped himself with stationery, and selected a new point for a pen. Half a dozen times he made a start and as often threw a crumpled sheet into the waste-paper basket. It took him nearly an hour to compose an epistle that suited him. What he had finally to content himself with was as follows:
"DEAR MADAM:—Please find inclosed a bundle of letters that apparently belong to you. They have just come into my possession. I therefore send them to you without delay. Your attention is particularly called to the one marked 'Exhibit A.'
"Very truly yours,
RICHARD MUIR GORDON."
He wrapped up the letters, including his own, sealed the package carefully, and walked downtown to the post office. Here he wrote upon the cover the name and address of Miss Valencia Valdés, then registered the little parcel with a request for a signed receipt after delivery at its destination.
Davis noticed that at dinner his friend was more gay than usual.
"You ce'tainly must have come into that million I mentioned, judging by your actions," he insisted, with a smile.
"Wrong guess, Steve. I've just been giving away a million. That's why I'm hilarious."
"You'll have to give me an easier one, son. Didn't know you had a million."
"Oh, well! A million, or a half, or a quarter, whatever the Moreño claim is worth. I'm not counting nickels. An hour ago I had it in my fist. I've just mailed it, very respectfully yours, to my friend the enemy." "Suppose you talk simple American that your Uncle Steve can understand, boy. What have you been up to?"
Dick told him exultantly.
"But, good Lord, why for did you make such a play? You had 'em where the wool was short. Now you've let loose and you'll have to wait 'steen years while the courts eat up all the profits. Of all the mule-headed chumps——"
"Hold your horses, Steve. I know what I'm doing. Said I was a spy and a thief and a liar, didn't she? Threw the hot shot into me proper for a cheap skate swindler, eh?" The young man laid down his knife, leaned across the table, and wagged a forefinger at Davis. "What do you reckon that young woman is going to think of herself when she opens that registered package and finds the letter that would have put the rollers under her claim muy pronto?"
"Think! She'll think you the biggest burro that ever brayed on the San Jacinto range. She'll have a commission appointed to examine you for lunacy. What in Mexico is ailin' you, anyhow? You're sick. That's what's wrong. Love-sick, by Moses!" exploded his friend.
Dick smiled blandly. "You've got another guess coming, Steve. She's going to eat dirt because she misjudged me so. She's going to lie awake nights and figure what play she can make to get even again. Getting hold of those blamed letters is the luckiest shot I've made yet. I was in bad—darned bad. Explanations didn't go. I was just a plain ornery skunk. Then I put over this grand-stand play and change the whole situation. She's the one that's in bad now. Didn't she tell me right off the bat what kind of a hairpin I was? Didn't she drive me off the ranch with that game leg of mine all to the bad? Good enough. Now she finds out I'm a white man she's going to be plumb sore at herself."
"What good does that do you? You're making a fight for the Rio Chama Valley, ain't you? Or are you just having a kid quarrel with a girl?"
"I wouldn't take the Rio Chama Valley as a gift if I had to steal it from Miss Valdés and her people. Ain't I making enough money up at Cripple Creek for my needs? No, Steve! I'm playing for bigger game than that. Size up my hand beside Don Manuel's, and it looks pretty bum. But I'm going to play it strong. Maybe at the draw I'll fill."
"Mebbe you won't."
"I can bet it like I had an ace full, can't I? Anybody can play poker when he's got a mitt full of big ones. Show me the man that can make two pair back an all-blue hand off the map."
"Go to it, you old sport. My money's on you," grinned the miner admiringly. "I'll go order a wedding present."
Through the pleasant coolness of the evening Dick sauntered along the streets to the Underwood home, nor was his contentment lessened because he knew that at a safe distance the brown shadows still dogged his steps. In a scabbard fitted neatly beneath his left arm rested a good friend that more than once had saved its owner's life. To the fraction of a second Gordon knew just how long it would take him to get this into action in case of need.
Kate Underwood met him at the door and took her guest into the living-room. Beside a student lamp a plump little old lady sat knitting. Somehow even before her soft voice welcomed him the visitor knew that her gentle presence diffused an atmosphere of home.
"Thee is welcome, Mr. Gordon. Kate has been telling us of thee."
The young man gave no evidence of surprise, but Kate explained as a matter of course.
"We are Friends, and at home we still use the old way of address."
"I have very pleasant memories of the Friends.
A good old lady who took the place of my own mother was one. It is nice to hear the speech again," answered Gordon.
Presently the conversation drifted to the Valdés family. It appeared that as children Kate and Valencia had known each other. The heiress of the Valdés estates had been sent to Washington to school, and later had attended college in the East. Since her return she had spent most of her time in the valley. So that it happened the two young women had not met for a good many years.
It occurred to Dick that there was a certain aloofness in Miss Underwood's attitude toward Valencia, a reticence that was not quite unfriendliness but retained the right of criticism. She held her judgment as it were in abeyance.
While Miss Underwood was preparing some simple refreshments Gordon learned from her mother that Manuel Pesquiera had been formerly a frequent caller.
"He has been so busy since he moved down to his place on the Rio Chama that we see nothing of him," she explained placidly. "He is a fine type of the best of the old Spanish families. Thee would find him a good friend."
"Or a good foe," the young man added.
She conceded the point with a sigh. "Yes. He is testy. He has the old patrician pride."
After they had eaten cake and ice cream, Kate showed Gordon over the house. It was built of adobe, and the window seats in the thick walls were made comfortable with cushions or filled with potted plants. Navajo rugs and Indian baskets lent the rooms the homey appearance such furnishings always give in the old Southwest. The house was built around a court in the center, fronting on which were long, shaded balconies both on the first and second floor. A profusion of flowering trailers rioted up the pillars and along the upper railing.
"The old families knew how to make themselves comfortable, anyhow," commented the guest.
"Yes, that's the word—comfort. It's not modern or stylish or up to date, but I never saw a house really more comfortable to live in than this," Miss Underwood agreed. She led the way through a French window from the veranda to a large room with a southern exposure. "How do you like this room?"
A Daughter of the Dons Page 10
